Claims he was asked to murder Olof Palme

The newspaper Aftonbladet reports that a business executive says he was asked by a member of the police to kill Olof Palme, shortly before the 1986 murder of the Swedish prime minister.

The newspaper says the police officer was well-known for extremist right wing views. According to the business executive, he told the Palme murder investigators about the incident, but they showed little interest at the time.

Criminologist Leif GW Persson, who’s novel about the Palme murder is the basis for a mini-series currently on Swedish Television, dismisses the claim as nothing new, typical of many reports over the years of someone claiming to have heard someone say they wanted to kill the controversial prime minister.

The story comes after former top United Nations and EU official Inga-Britt Ahlenius wrote in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter during the weekend, suggesting that the secret Stay Behind movement could have been behind Palme’s death. Stay Behind was one of a series of underground resistance organizations created by NATO and the CIA in Western European countries during the Cold War, designed to fight back in case of a Soviet invasion.

However writing in the rival newspaper Svenska Dagbladet Monday, the journalist who first revealed the existence of Stay Behind, dismisses the suggestion, arguing that as prime minister Palme was actually in charge of Stay Behind.